Friday, October 12, 2012

My friend Kera, from Sisterbug Monograms asked me a few weeks ago if I would be willing to get creative with some wooden monograms. I always jump at the chance to get my craft on, so of course I said YES!

So then, I had to come up with the perfect finish....what's a girl to do?

A couple of years ago, before Pinterest(WHAT? There was a time before Pinterest?), I ran across this really awesome tutorial at Brassy Apple on how to do an aged paint technique.

I knew that this would be the perfect paint treatment for my gi-normous "Dub-Yuh."

Today, I am showing you the step-by-step process that I went through.

The monograms come in a natural finish..or to us country folk, "not done up".;o)

So because they are un-finished, you need supplies to make it even more awesome.

For your supply list, you will need:

-Acrylic paints, I used 4 in all

-Sponge Paint Brushes

-Dove Bar Soap

-Sand Paper

-Blow Dryer(to make the paint dry quicker) &

-Paper Towels

The four colors I chose were Metallic Red, Turquoise, Mustard Yellow, and Brown.

I chose the metallic red as my base coat.

After painting the entire letter, sides and all, I used my blow dryer to speed the drying process. A great trick for those of us who are extremely impatient...of course, I have never heard of anyone who actually enjoyed watching paint dry:o)

Once the paint was dry, I rubbed the bar soap in random places. These are the spots where the red will shine through.

The next step is to paint with your second color. I chose turquoise.

I used the blow dryer once again to dry the paint.

And then I sanded the areas where the soap was applied. You can see where the soap is, even though it's been painted over. If by chance you can't, you can just run the sand paper over the entire letter, and the paint will pull up really easy where the soap is.

Now, I thought about leaving things as is. It looked fine with just the red and turquoise, and some of you are probably saying, "Girl, you should have left well enough alone." But, I decided to add in my third color, mustard.

I rubbed more soap on the turquoise areas, and then painted the mustard yellow around all of the red.

Here is a closer view of what I am talking about. It doesn't look all that fantastic, which is perfectly fine, since this is supposed to be an aged painting technique:o)

After the yellow dried, I sanded once again.

The colors were still a little too stark for me, so I decided to continue the aging process.

That's where the brown came in. I simply dabbed a paper towel into some brown paint rubbed it on, and then immediately rubbed it off.

In this picture, you can see that the left side has been "dirtied up" a bit, and the right side has not.

And here is the final product. An aged "W" or dub-yuh, as they say down here in the south.

To give you a little perspective on how enormous this thing is, here is a picture of our front porch.

I also had one made with my Fussy Monkey Business logo.

I used a stencil on this one.

I dirtied it up a bit too, but it's hard to tell in this picture.

I didn't get a picture of Kera's finished monogram, but here she is hard at work on hers...she's probably going to kill me because she didn't know I was snapping pictures of her as well:o)

So swing on over to Sisterbug Monograms, and place your order for a fantastic wooden monogram. They range in size from 8 inches all the way up to 36 inches. It's never too early to start Christmas shopping!!

A big thank you to Kera for giving me a chance to get creative, and thanks to Brassy Apple for the inspiration and fantastic tutorial!!